Monday 17 November 2008 I awoke and looked out my window to see a clean sheet of morning dew all frozen across the mountainside glistening as the reflection of sunlight pierced the horizen and decided that today was a perfect day to go looking for mushrooms. Many people-mostly ones with little or no experiance at all-told me I would have no luck finding them in this excessively cold environment, however, I am a rebel with little patience for opinions and proceded towards the woods. Look at the pictures is all I have to say-look at the pictures............
I found this picture on the net in Spain-it was picked in a place called Aliaguilla-WOW, that's a huge rebollon!
And I thought I had found a big one!
This is a Basket full of Rebollones I picked this morning-27 OCT 2008.
Guilty Wood Bugs
A Single Foto of the lone Rebollon
A Single Foto of the lone Rebollon
I'm not one to bitch about just anything in the world, but every now and then, along comes an asshole that just simply needs discussion-and I followed three of them today. Let me start back a bit so this will sound more logical.
Living in Spain is an adventure, and one of those exciting events happens to be something very simple, and traditional as well-it's called, "Looking for Revellones". It is simply walking in the woods and looking for a special type of mushroom used for eating with ham and various other meals. The problem is that there is absolutely no control over the process. The only law that is reinforced is that you must gather them in a basket so the spores will fall out and reproduce. The quantity you gather is un-limited. Normally, someone will go into the woods and gather a couple of dozen of these delicious mushrooms-if they are lucky enough to find them-and call it a day, however, there are many people who go into the woods literally rapping it in order to get as many of the mushrooms as possible. Why do they do that, you ask? For MONEY! It's all about the big fat coin. I was in the woods today and had gathered my couple of dozen and approached three older men and asked them if I could take a picture of the enormous amounts of revellones they had acquired and they very quickly told me where I could put my camera. Well, they knew what they were doing was wrong-even if no law governs their actions-and their guilt would not allow them to have their pictures advertised of their rapping the woods.
Oh well, as they left I took their picture any way and you can see they have overflowing baskets of orange colored revellones. I don't know what to do. I think that there should be a license issued if you want to gather these things, or a lottery of sorts provided by each town, because it looks like a gathering for a rock concert on the weekends, and those that know where the spores grow always appear and rape the land clean before anyone gets a chance to get a few for their personal use. Oh well, I will write to the forestry department and ask them what to do and until then, I've posted some fotos for anyone interested in shrooms.
Peace Out....
